6 Reasons Why Being Dependent Sucks (With SSI and Disability)

This has been back and forth in my mind as I go through the motions of daily life. When I talk about dependence, I usually mean one of two things (or both): 1) General co-dependency, and 2) dependency on the government. The first one here means I generally depend on other people and devices to assist me with phone calls, translating a conversation, and being there with me when I go into public places. The second one here usually refers to public insurance like TennCare, which is associated with social security income for the disabled.

Dependency is one of the biggest debates with ADA and public as a whole.  ADA is being blamed for creating dependency on America, whereas they successfully created awareness of disability issues where disabled people were largely ignored.  It's a back and forth thing.

So, without further ado, I present to you six reasons why dependency sucks.

1. Bad stigma. This is the least important, but highly relevant. Dependency as a whole is scowled at. There are debates upon debates about people who have welfare. This is a very hurtful thing to encounter when, in general, people do not believe you contribute to the society at all. You're not part of a whole because you do not actually work and you earn money from social security out of hard-working taxpayers' pocket. That's ESPECIALLY if you're a foreigner which gets many people frothing at the mouth.
2. Playing By the Rules. In my case, the only way I could have insurance (to cover the extremely expensive costs of my cochlear implant which does go into the thousands) was to retrieve SSI (social security income). If you were to have all this, SSI says you cannot marry, you cannot have a job, you cannot own anything that values over what you receive. Lose SSI, lose insurance. It's a hard game to play.
3. Emotional Risk. You can get stuck in feelings of inadequacy and entrapment. Dependency as a life-long situation is quite rough. Perhaps you didn't experience things the way you should have. Perhaps you could have gotten tougher and learned to be more independent. Perhaps, perhaps... thoughts like these can be so pervasive.
4. Quality of Living. It's not the best as YOU can make it to be, when others are providing their concepts and quantification of what is the best for you due to your disability.
5. Cost of Living. The money you receive is calculated to base off of what they believe you can survive on. For some, it can go up to just a little over $600 a month. With shelter to pay for whether rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, and gas, I cannot see how that can really be stretched. That leads me to....
6. Paperwork. Of course, it's like with anything, but insurance and social security provides so much paperwork to one recipient that is comparable to 5 acres of trees.

There are still a lot of good things going for people who receive the benefits. There are also alternative solutions if it doesn't work out. But I stick to the fact that dependency after a certain degree sucks as a whole.

This is not against the disabled, or I would be against myself.  This is against the ridiculous things Penn and Taylor talk about on their Bullsh!t show.  This is against government intrusion and deciding how we should live in order to keep insurance on things we could never afford otherwise, like cochlear implant surgery, appointments on tune-ups, necessities, and upgrades.

For me, I have a choice.  It is either to lose my hearing through losing social security or live my life.

Editor's Note: The URL isn't quite right. I had planned on 10 reasons at first, but I ended up narrowing it down to six as some of the reasons were similar to others.